Connecting War and

Christopher P. Davey International Relations Insights & Analysis Peace and Conflict Analysis

Genocide physical destruction, with planned elimination of a Definitions of genocide have been produced by group’s rights, integrity and life. Groups may even be lawyers, scholars, politicians and victims. Debates forcibly re-identified as another group, resulting in about these definitions manifest in tension over the similar destructive outcome. broad and narrow conceptions of genocide. For instance, the UN Convention for the Prevention and Following the establishment of the United Nations in Punishment of the Crime of Genocide narrows target 1945, and the uncovering of Nazi crimes during the groups to those with ethnic, religious, racial, national war, Lemkin lobbied incessantly for the international, identity. The term is also used more broadly as a judicial recognition of genocide. Although, “genocide” rhetorical device by news media and activists in order was not a major feature of the Nuremberg trials, the to mobilize popular opinion. The simplest definition logic of prosecuting Nazi war crimes under the rubric of genocide is that it is the intended destruction of of the mass destruction of civilians was pervasive specific groups. Despite definitional debates, this throughout the trials and sentencing. Government type of destructive action has been part of human representatives at the UN entered into negotiations history as long as warfare itself, however, the two are of a treaty that defined and outlawed the crime. The not necessarily synonymous. Whilst war can occur first round of negotiations produced a document without genocide, genocide rarely occurs without war, that explicitly acknowledged the multiple aspects of yet, this is not a strictly cause and effect relationship. Lemkin’s “genocide”: cultural, physical, and biological This explorative article will address social and legal destruction, the latter referring to the removal approaches to genocide, some historic intersections of children from a group and the reproductive of war and genocide, the problematic nature of sterilization of members of the group. The final treaty intent and ideology, humanitarian warfare aimed at accepted by the General Assembly in 1948, excluded preventing genocide, and historic and contemporary cultural destruction and the targeting of political issues of resources and climate in war and genocide. groups. Genocide was also acknowledged as a crime that could occur in both times of war and peace. A Social or Legal Phenomenon? The term “genocide” itself originates with a single Even though Lemkin’s law had finally been author, Raphael Lemkin. Prior to Lemkin’s naming of established, it saw little exercise in the coming this phenomena, it has littered recorded history. Both decades. The term itself was subject to Cold War the Bible and Quran document divinely mandated rhetoric and political debates, while under the cover mass slaughter of noncombatants. Greek and Roman of US and USSR interests internationally, violence traditions also describe the destruction of Troy against specific groups, labelled as ideological and Carthage. Yet, what makes genocide a unique enemies, was encouraged and permitted in contexts phenomenon was the purposefully labelling by a of decolonization and independence. Most notably contemporary observer of twentieth century warfare. in Latin America, have been documented It was this history that captured Lemkin, as seen in his in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Guatemala. The later writings on genocide throughout human history. latter case continues to be legally contested into the 2010s and also involved US training of military forces Reviewing photographic evidence and eyewitness in tactics of torture and violence against civilians. The accounts of the destruction of Armenians in the People’s Republic of China also engaged in civilian waning Ottoman Empire, Lemkin, a Polish jurist in group destruction and forced famine at a massive scale the 1930s pushed for international law to prohibit this during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural level of destruction, banning attacks on a national Revolution”. These internal Cold War conflicts that group’s physical and cultural integrity. Unsuccessful, reached genocidal proportions were fostered, or went but determined, Lemkin escaped Poland after its defeat unquestioned, during geopolitical bi-polar rivalry. by Nazi Germany and fled to the USA. There he took up work in the early 1940s describing the process of It was not until after the Cold War that the UN destruction underway in Eastern Europe. Termed as Convention on Genocide was used in prosecuting and genocide, or literally race-killing, Lemkin articulated attempts at preventing genocide. The 1990s saw mass a process by which a group is subjected to a range of destruction as simultaneously broadcasted across the processes and outcomes, including both cultural and satellite TV connected world and devoid of Cold War

3 International Relations Insights & Analysis Peace and Conflict Analysis divisions that in the past had protected genocidaires. Historical Cases of Genocide and War The International Tribunals for both Yugoslavia and Genocide occurs following warfare, in the context Rwanda ushered in the significance of international of, or during warfare, and sometimes within a criminal law, and judgements that utilized Lemkin’s social or political “war” or campaign that becomes first framing of genocide. In some cases such courts violent on a massive scale. The following examples, are burdened with defining atrocities as genocide or grouped by type, demonstrate these intersections not. Significantly, these ad-hoc tribunals established of war and genocide. These also utilize the varied case law for rape as a weapon of war in the context aspects of violence (structural, direct and cultural) of genocide. This highlighted issues of gender in as described by scholars such as Johan Galtung. genocide, not only raising the question of whether or The genocide of Tutsis, moderate Hutus and Twa not genocide is particularly more lethal for men or peoples in 1994 Rwanda, erupted following a peace women, but also how genocide might be experienced agreement pausing a violent civil war in the north. differently based on gender. It was the case against With the Rwandan Armed Forces, militias and the Jean-Paul Akayesu, mayor of the Taba Commune Rwandan Patriotic Front still mobilized and arming during the 1994 , which heralded themselves, violence very easily rolled into successive the first genocide conviction. Rape, as a weapon, was wars starting with the “War of Liberation” in 1996 framed in the prosecution and conviction of Akayesu Zaire. Further retaliatory massacres and genocides as an integral part of genocide in this local context. continued against both Hutus and Tutsis of Rwandan, Burundian and Congolese origin. Indigenous peoples, The 2002 establishment of the International Criminal in the expansion of colonial Europe, were subject to Court and the Rome Statute, whilst having its roots in violent warfare, and campaigns of social or cultural the post-World War II international justice movement, destruction. From opposite ends of the Western stemmed from a global campaign during this 1990s colonial world, Tolowas in 1890s California and era of international jurisdiction and prosecution. The Tasmanians in early 1800s Van Diemen’s Land were Rome Statute articulates verbatim the UN Convention exposed to settler violence, programs of resettlement on Genocide, entrenching crimes against humanity, and re-education, extinguishing the cultural and war crimes, and crimes of aggression into the court’s physical life of these groups. Practices of warfare and jurisdiction. Cases taken on by the Court include military cultures have also influenced the scale of those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, destruction. In German South-West Africa Herero Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, Central African Republic, and Nama peoples were hunted down and herded into and Uganda. Of note was the warrant for the arrest of the Omaheke desert as part of German annihilationist Omar al-Bashir, as the first sitting head of state charged military tactics forged in past colonial and European with genocide during counter-insurgency warfare wars. First Nations’ children in Canada were also in Darfur. While the court makes no specialized targeted in social warfare that aimed to destroy the connection between war and genocide, many of the Indian and enforce western, white values, education cases tacitly acknowledge the prevalent context of war and culture. Regardless of how these two phenomena for acts of genocide, or the role of military leaders and collide, it is when they do that the scope and magnitude former heads of state involved in wars that commit of destruction is catalysed into a level of violence that genocide. destroys groups of human beings.

Given the variety of outcomes for the legal prosecution Genocide is also produced by wars of independence of genocide, and the deep, contextual connection to and wars of state crisis. The wars of the 1990s break-up war, many academic and sociological perspectives of of Yugoslavia, saw mass scale destruction of have run the gamut of amending Lemkin’s and physical life from the burning of libraries, heritage law to a broader definition, reminiscent of the first sites and museums, to the use of rape as a weapon of committee draft, to separating the legal and social war and the use of overwhelming military force on studies of the phenomenon altogether. According civilian populations. The rise of the Islamic State in the to scholar Adam Jones, genocide remains a potent Levant (ISIL) has also produced regional warfare and rhetorical tool for popular mobilization, both in the highly publicized destruction of historic religious the name of preventing destruction and protecting communities and ancient cultural sites; such conflict civilians. continues to affect the lives of many in the region,

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Arkan’s Tigers kill and kick Bosnian Muslim civilians during the first battle for Bosnia in Bijeljina, Bosnia, March 31, 1992. The Serbian paramilitary unit was responsible for killing thousands of people during the Bosnian war, and Arkan was later indicted for war crimes. (Photo Credit: Ron Haviv) displacing and target specific groups. The Srebrenica a year after the execution of King Louis XVI, reacted attacks often act as the zenith of this episode and swiftly and pointedly against those outside the new demonstrate a form of genocide: a gendercide of parameters of belonging set by revolutionary politics. combat aged males were selected from Bosnian refugees and executed by Bosnian-Serb soldiers. Intent and Ideology The impact of legal definitions has led to an emphasis Such wars may also intend on forging a new state, again on proving intent and establishing the presence of in the context of crisis. The Ottoman, Cambodian, destructive ideologies. As such these elements have and French ideological struggles for power and new allowed scholars to narrowly identify specific cases state formation saw the targeting of people outside of genocide (such as , Rwanda 1994, of those that are perceived to “naturally” belong and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) as the gold- to the new state. Armenians and other Christian standard of this type of destruction, where perpetrator minorities, caught between a World War I front ideology and intent to destroy a group is apparent and an emerging state were subjected to cultural through historical interpretations or documentary and physical destruction. Cham Muslims and even evidence. The post-war trials of Nazi war criminals Cambodians within the Khmer Rouge party structure framed the party and state apparatus as a criminal were executed in the so-called . Many organization that planned and executed destruction, were taken into prisons where they were tortured following through on ideological tenets requiring the with physical, sexual and mental violence before elimination of the Jews. However, within the context finally being executed. Others were forced to produce of warfare, scholars, such as Christopher Browning, fabricated, self-incriminating evidence of their have argued a different perspective. After the initial transgressions against the regime, in a manner to rival defeat of the Soviet war machine in the summer of George Orwell’s dystopian 1984. During the French 1941, a sense of inevitable triumph swept through the Revolution the Catholic and royalist Vendée became Wehrmacht. Within this atmosphere, mass killings of subject to a counter-insurgency war that implemented Jews increased as SS Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing scorched earth policy and mass drownings on a weary units, moved east encountering larger, Orthodox and defeated civilian population. The new Jacobin Jewish communities. From the late summer of 1941 dominated regime, finding itself confronted by both to the following months, two distinct campaigns of a British fleet in the channel and an insurrection only mass shootings were conducted by Einsatzgruppen,

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Wehrmacht, Ordnungspolizei and local collaborators. Genocide can also be politicized so as to justify so- These operations embodied a war strategy that called humanitarian intervention. The War on Terror, escalated as distinguishable enemy “Others” became following the terrorist attack in New York City, or “9/11”, more abundant in an area intended as agricultural was legitimated by characterizing regimes in Iraq and colonies for the Third Reich. Afghanistan as previously or currently genocidal, as well the accusation of supporting terrorists. Browning also documents the increase in tension Humanitarian intervention, therefore, transitioned between those who saw Jewish forced labour as an into regime change and installing democracy, resulting economic benefit of occupation, and those who in years of continued turmoil and instability. It is also considered such a logistical or ideological liability often the case that international intervention facilitates and that Jews were to be eliminated. Soviet resurgence retaliatory attacks between warring parties. In Kosovo further catalysed radical action, along with the and Serbia, following NATO bombings of strategic establishment of the first series of several death targets, parties exchanged incidences of massacre and camps throughout occupied Poland. Browning’s expulsion. Currently, many politicians and Western study of the Hamburg reserve police battalion further actors continue to legitimize aerial bombing in the demonstrated that middle class, middle-aged Germans, region on the basis that ISIL is likewise a genocidal by and large devoid of ideological commitments to regime worthy of such a response. Nazism, became through the context of warfare well- trained executors and hunters of Jews. In the hostile environment of occupied territory, held together by shared sense of duty and necessary camaraderie, these men engaged in genocide around eastern front. On the surface these actions may seem intended and ideologically driven. Yet, a deeper perspective presents a view that is more socially complex and layered with elements of group loyalty and survival in a warzone. Genocide, therefore, became more likely as social conditions were nurtured through warfare or wartime mentality.

Humanitarian Wars and Genocide Rwandan refugee children plead with Zairean soldiers to allow them across a bridge separating Rwanda and Zaire where their Since Allied forces arrived and surveyed the lingering mothers had crossed moments earlier before the soldiers closed destruction of Nazi genocide at death and concentration the border on Aug. 20, 1994. (Photo Credit: Jean-Marc Bouju/AP) camps stretching from Dachau and Bergen-Belsen to Auschwitz, Western humanitarianism and liberalism Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or drones, as they has placed moral and political value in waging war in are more popularly known, has further characterized the prevention of genocide. Yet, the prime driver for humanitarian intervention against genocide. This any international intervention most often falls to the type of strategic deployment intended to prevent national interests of the intervening party or state in massacre of civilians, more often than not endangers question. This logic is not limited to Western states. lives and destroys infrastructure, making post-conflict Genocides in both Cambodia and Rwanda were rebuilding challenging and utilizing doctrines like curtailed by military interventions. However, these Responsibility to Protect, as another vehicle for state- actions occurring in the context of civil or regional interested interventions. In Libya, where Muammar warfare demonstrate that whilst intervention may Gaddafi threatened and engaged in mass killing of appear to be humanitarian or protective in nature, civilians in response to his regime collapsing in 2011, it is often the result of national or strategic interests. drone bombing was used repeatedly in attacking Intervention by NATO countries in both Kosovo strategic military targets, allowing Libyan rebels and more recently Libya, demonstrate the interplay to overwhelm Gaddafi’s forces and end his regime. of political goals and hegemonic politics by large Again instability has followed such actions intended international powers, with interests in influence or to prevent genocide. resources.

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Resources and Climate Evolving forms of warfare and genocide, along with Studies of civil war, “new wars” and the continued widening perspectives in an increasingly global world, occurrences of intrastate wars, frequently spilling present a web of crises where genocide becomes part violence and refugees across international borders, of the phenomenon of climate violence. Whilst war indicate that war continues to be part of human and genocide have become infrequent in the Global existence, with genocide as its most destructive North, the Global South is home to new crises where form. As societies become more globally aware, war, genocide and climate violence have become resulting from digital connectivity or the rise of global mixed, and especially acute where contests and challenges, conflict over resources seem to emerge at unequal distribution of resources produce massive the front and centre of globalization and contemporary inequality. Mark Levene describes this web as post- history. Wars over resources are certainly not new, genocide; a type of mass violence or so-called low- neither is the application of genocide in such conflicts. intensity conflict, where climate change, state collapse, The conquest of Central and South America by the war lords, competition and illicit use of resources Spanish and Portuguese armies and settlers was rife create a type of destructive violence, without any clear with resource and market driven violence. Genocides intent to destroy. This condition of regions or states here were propelled by warfare based on a logic of white becomes more severe as actors endeavour to compete European superiority and the insatiable demand for in global capitalism, or being subject to international exportable goods and natural resources. Christopher debt or neoliberal financial systems. The context of Columbus and Hernan Cortez’s searches for gold were ongoing or simmering conflicts and warfare further frustrated by the absence of accessible treasure and compound this scenario. willing labour. Both engaged in campaigns of terror against indigenous populations that decimated these Violence in both Kyrgyzstan and Kenya has resulted in peoples. In the case of the Caribbean Arawak peoples, the targeting killings and destructive process of some they were entirely exterminated. The spread of trade, groups. In Kenya desertification catalyses pastoralist markets and resource driven violence in European societies into conflict where small arms are available, colonies also resulted in the commodification of poverty is rampant and water scarce. The northern people themselves, creating a transatlantic slave trade region of Turkana has seen some of the worst conflict that was perhaps the most globalized episode of and effects of this web of crises. Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic genocide. minority of Uzbeks has been subject to discriminatory policies and communal violence in the wake of The most salient case of genocide as an outcome or drought and poverty. Kyrgyzstan’s dependency on means of gathering and exploiting resources is the hydroelectric power, wreaked havoc on by droughts Belgian Congo, or the Congo Free State. Established in the region, creates post-genocide violence where in 1885, King Leopold II drained the region of rubber Uzbek people were targeted as the state buckled under and ivory for sale on international markets. In doing climate induced pressures. so he left a wake of a seriously reduced Congolese population, many who survived were mutilated as a First as Tragedy, then as Farce form of discipline and punishment. The Belgian run Reflecting the spirit of Marx’s well-quoted saying, war Force Publique conducted a reign of terror to ensure and genocide, albeit in dynamic ways, continue to quotas were met and the continuing profitability stride hand in hand across the pages of history and of the colony. This private army, whose ranks were current affairs without humanity’s critical attention. filled by Congolese men pressed into service, offered The connections are repeatedly underestimated, as a less fateful role in colonial Congo, but nonetheless demonstrated by the lack of acknowledgement of a brutalizing experience. The more recent pursuit of civilian burden in many conflicts, and disconnected resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has in later analysis. This latter dysfunction is perhaps fuelled and become interwoven with contemporary attributable to the problematic nature of intent and conflict in the region, with the seizure and illegal ideology as such continue to rule and reign over mining of precious metals being exported via regional popular and political interpretations of genocide powers sponsoring internal militias and rebel groups and war. The implementation of history in justifying in the DRC. interventions against genocide, likewise repeats, in a farcical manner the politicized simplification of

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history, without recognizing the tangled relationship 19. Moses, Dirk, ‘Conceptual blockages and definitional of war and genocide, more often than not coming dilemmas in the ‘racial century’: genocides of indigenous peoples together in destructive processes either aimed at or and the Holocaust’, Patterns of Prejudice 1 (2010): 159-191. resulting in the obliteration of groups. 20. Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence http://www. massviolence.org/ Further Readings: 21. Parenti, Christian. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the 1. Bloxham, Donald and A. Dirk Moses, eds. Genocide, Oxford New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation Books, 2011. History Handbooks. Oxford University Press. 2009. 22. Raphael Lemkin Project, Center for the Study of Genocide 2. Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police and Human Rights, Rutgers http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center- Battalion 101 and the Final Solution. New york: HarperCollins study-genocide-conflict-resolution-and-human-rights/raphael- Publishers, 1998. lemkin-project-0 3. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish 23. Shaw, Martin. War and Genocide: Organized Killing Modern Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. 2004. 24. Zimmerer, Jurgen. ‘Climate Change, environmental violence 4. Esparza, Marcia, Henry R. Huttenbach, Daniel Feierstein and genocide,’ The International Journal of Human Rights 18, (eds). State Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold .no. 3 (2014): 265-280. War Years. Oxon: Routledge, 2010. 5. Frieze, Donna-Lee. Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin. Yale University Press, 2013. 6. Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace and Peace Research”, Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 9 (1969): 167-191. 7. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost. London: Macmillan, 2006. 8. Hull, Isabel, V. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. 9. Kaldor, Mary. Old & New Wars: Organized Violence in the Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. 10. Kiernan, Ben. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press, 2007. 11. Jones, Adam, A Comprehensive Introduction to Genocide. New york: Routledge, 2010. 12. Gendercide and Genocide. Nashville: Vanderbilt Press, 2004.

13. New Directions of Genocide Research. New York: Routledge, 2012. 14. Lawson, Tom. The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. 15. Lemkin, Raphael. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of By Christopher P. Davey Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Christopher P. Davey is a graduate of Utah Valley 1944. University’s Peace and Justice Studies programme and 16. Levene, Mark. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State vols. 1 the Joint European programme of Human Rights and & 2. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. at Kingston University. He is currently 17. The Changing Face of Mass Murder: Massacre, Genocide, a PhD researcher in Peace Studies at the University of and Post-genocide’. International Social Science Journal 54. No. Bradford, and a Associate Research Fellow at the John 174 (2002): 443-452. and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies. Mr. 18. Mamdani, Mahmood. ‘Politics of naming: genocide, civil war, Davey’s main research research areas include: genocide insurgency,’ London Review of Books 29. No. 5 (2007): 5-8. May, Larry. Genocide: A Normative Account. Cambridge in central Africa, and colonial and imperial legacies of University Press, 2012. genocide in British history.

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